Organizational Change
The latest creative strategies and tools helping organizations to engage their teams in building market-leading, purpose-driven brands.
3/4 of Millennials Would Take a Pay Cut to Work for a Socially Responsible Company
Three-quarters (76 percent) of Millennials consider a company’s social and environmental commitments when deciding where to work and nearly two-thirds (64 percent) won’t take a job if a potential employer doesn’t have strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, according to the 2016 Cone Communications Millennial Employee Engagement Study. The study reveals that meaningful engagement around CSR is a business – and bottom line – imperative, impacting a company’s ability to appeal to, retain and inspire Millennial talent (that’s a business case if we ever heard one).
Levi Strauss Expanding, Publicly Sharing Industry-Changing Worker Wellbeing Initiative
Marking the 25th anniversary of its industry-changing supplier code of conduct, called Terms of Engagement, Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&Co.) announced a new commitment to expand the company’s pioneering Worker Wellbeing initiative – both within and outside the company. By 2025, the company aims to:
5 Steps to Successfully Integrating Purpose Into Your Organisation
Business leaders who embrace ‘purpose beyond profit’ can transform the fortunes of their organisations, but they can’t do it alone. A company’s purpose only truly comes to life if all employees are both inspired and equipped to put purpose into action. This means that purposeful leaders need to have a firm grasp on how purpose flows and moves within an organisation: how it inspires and enrols people, how it must be mapped and translated across different parts of the business, how it encounters resistance and how it unlocks new approaches to problem-solving. Above all, business leaders must understand that truly effective purpose serves as an invitation to co-create. What does this mean in practice? Here are five key steps to help you learn how to go with the flow:
The Future of Work and Employee Engagement Through the Lens of Millennials
“What comes to mind when you think of millennials in the workplace?” Bethan Harris, strategist and collaborator at Collectively and the League of Intrapreneurs (LI), asked during her Tuesday afternoon session at SB’16 Copenhagen.
Square Wants to Rid the World of Paper Receipts. Why Hasn’t This Happened Already?
Have you ever been thankful the cashier didn’t ask if you want a receipt, because you’re tired of the paper piling up? You do your best to recycle receipts, but there’re still those that slip through the cracks into the trash. Have you ever wondered why we still have paper receipts in a digital world? Your annoyance is well-placed. According to mobile payments juggernaut Square, these little paper slips inflict the following damage on the environment per year:
Languish Anguish: Why Good Sustainability Strategies Stall
“Our organization is totally supportive of sustainability as long as nothing else comes up or it doesn’t interfere with something the Executive wants to do!” Hands up if you have heard this before. Many organizations find that after the long process of building and adopting a sustainability policy or strategy, they stall. Sure, implementing and embedding sustainability into the business and day-to-day operational decisions is hard work, but that’s not the only thing holding up changes. Often, the environmental management or sustainability plan becomes siloed within the organization, resulting in delays and disorganization. As well, functional leaders don’t always understand the plan’s relevance to their area.
Target Reels in 100% Sustainably Sourced Seafood
In 2011, Target set a goal for its entire fresh and frozen seafood assortment to be sustainable, traceable, or in a time-bound improvement process by the end of 2015. Through a partnership with consultancy FishWise, the retailer met the goal for 100% of its owned-brand seafood products, and 97% of its full seafood assortment. The remaining products are expected to achieve full compliance by the end of this year.
Distilling Complexity: Designing an Effective Sustainability Plan
On Black Friday of 2011, Patagonia released a now-famous New York Times advertisement with a picture of a jacket and a simple plea: “Don’t buy this jacket.” The response, ironically, was a surge in sales. Some analysts deemed the whole thing a cheap trick. But the underlying message was clear.
Want to Attract Star Employees? The Role of the HR Leader as the Driver of Company Value
Your company’s sustainability commitments help attract the best and the brightest, reduce turnover and enhance productivity. That’s the substance of consistent and compelling research that shows the power of embedding sustainability into corporate culture and its relationship to the bottom line. HR leaders can use this knowledge to create powerful recruitment, engagement and retention strategies.
PUMA Launches Financing Program to Reward Suppliers for Sustainability Performance
Sports company PUMA is offering its suppliers in select emerging markets with a new financing program in partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group. The program is expected to incentivize improvements to suppliers’ social, environmental and health and safety standards, and is a first-of-its-kind financing structure for the apparel industry.
The Benefits of Integrating, Communicating Your Purpose Are Undeniable – Here's Why
At the core of the most successful and attractive companies is a singular, authentic purpose that defines how it creates value. Purpose directs business decisions that determine the way value is created and guides how the company engages its stakeholders. It also enables organisations to unify their staff and focus on a common goal. When a company finds its purpose and embraces its authentic nature it can enhance its reputation, build trust and create value, not only for the business but also for society.
Moving Beyond Job Creation: Defining and Measuring the Creation of Quality Jobs
In most parts of the country, we don’t have an unemployment problem anymore. Our problem is a lack of good job opportunities for most Americans. While millions of jobs have been created since the Great Recession, the fastest job growth has occurred in places such as strip malls and fast food restaurants, where jobs provide people a means of subsistence but not an opportunity to achieve financial security and advance a career. Averaged across all occupations, real wages have not only remained stagnant but have dropped, building on a decades-long trend where workers and their families increasingly cannot afford the basic goods and services they need to get by.
Introducing the Systems View of Life Into Organizations
I recently took part in a Sustainable Brands webinar with Fritjof Capra, in which we discussed how to introduce systems thinking and the systems view of life into organizations. After interviewing Fritjof in January, I invited him to take part in this webinar to explore the issues in more depth, an opportunity which would also allow participants to ask questions and contribute their thoughts and ideas as well.
How LinkedIn Is Working to Connect Hard-to-Reach Job Seekers With New Opportunities
News Deeply, in partnership with Sustainable Brands, has produced a series of profiles looking at how brands are tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges. The goal is to examine trends and gather insights from a new wave of corporate citizenship – in an era when the private sector is increasingly expected to play a positive role in improving our lives and societies. This is the 5th article in the series.
Regenerative Business, Part 5: Understanding the Nested Nature of Living Systems
This is the fifth blog in a series on the seven First Principles of regeneration, drawing from living systems sciences. Read parts one, two, three and four.
J&J Shifts Focus to Material Impacts for People, Places, Practices in New 2020 Goals
Johnson & Johnson (J&J), the world’s sixth-largest consumer health company, has released the results from their latest set of five-year goals and announced a new set for 2020. J&J’s Citizenship & Sustainability 2020 Goals represent a shift in how the company measures impact, increasing focus on material impacts as opposed to incremental reductions and year-over-year improvements. Through seven distinct goals with a combined 15 associated targets and metrics, the company aims to help make people and places healthier while creating an internal culture of health and wellbeing.
Target Highlights Successes, Shortcomings in Ongoing Sustainability Journey
In 2015, Target wrapped up its five-year goals and built the foundation for the future of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practice, which is to make wellness a way of life; pursue sustainability for products and business operations; champion a more inclusive society; and invest and engage in their communities. Summarizing their progress and capturing important projects and milestones, Target’s 2015 Corporate Social Responsibility Report was released this week.
Future-Fit Business: A Metamorphosis in Our Midst
Since the industrial revolution, we have achieved great feats of economic, social and technological advancement for which we can be proud. The structures and strictures of old have served us well in many material ways. But times they are a changin’. We now face increasing volatility: enter the world of commodity spikes, resource scarcity, environmental destruction, social inequality, economic turbulence, population and migrant pressure, changing demographics, the internet of things, climate change, and more.
Kimberly-Clark Concludes Successful 5-Year Program, Sets New Goals for 2022
With the release of its latest sustainability report on June 30th, Kimberly-Clark proudly announced that it had achieved or surpassed all of its 5-year sustainability goals. In anticipation of the company’s 150th anniversary, Kimberly-Clark introduced a new set of sustainability priorities and goals through 2022.
Internal Branding: How to Create an Employee Programme With Stickiness
The success of a community programme for your employees probably has more to do with branding than you first think. How can you activate purpose in employees and keep them engaged with your community programmes over the long term? Importantly, how can you create internal visibility about your programmes that withstands company change, especially in an uncertain post-Brexit world? Using examples from GSK and Patagonia we consider how their use of bold internal branding has allowed them to lead the way to creating employee programmes with that all-important ‘stickiness’ for the long term.